Michigan's last surviving WWII fly girl recalls her time in the sky, blazing new paths

Jane Baessler Doyle was among the first American women to fly military planes when she became a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots in 1943. She flew to help the war effort, freeing men to fly in combat during World War II.

Wochit

GRAND RAPIDS —Jane Doyle held a heavy bronze medal in her creased hands, running her fingers over the engraved surface.

It shone in the light streaming through the window of her apartment in a Grand Rapids senior living complex. The words: "The first women in history to fly American Military Aircraft" were etched on the outer rim.

Mildred (Jane) Doyle, 96, a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots during World War II, ...more

Mildred (Jane) Doyle, 96, a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots during World War II, flashes a smile while speaking about her time in the service at her Grand Rapids home. With 1,074 other women, Doyle flew military planes in support missions for the U.S. Air Force.

It took an Act of Congress to give the medals to Doyle and the 1,073 other WASP fly girls who boosted the war effort. The women were recruited to fly stateside for the U.S. Army Air Forces during the war, freeing up male pilots to serve in combat overseas.

Doyle is the last living WASP in Michigan, according to Texas Woman's University, the repository for the history of the group. In all, just 69 remain nationally.

Mildred (Jane) Baessler, as a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots during World War II, at ...more

Mildred (Jane) Baessler, as a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots during World War II, at the controls of a World War II airplane at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas.

Mildred Jane Doyle

She was a trailblazer unafraid to be the first girl or woman to do just about anything — practically a poster child for today's feminist mantra: nevertheless, she persisted.

"The Women's Airforce Service Pilots were groundbreaking in the same way that the iconic Rosie the Riveters were — one in flying and one in building the aircraft," said Kristen Wildes, director of the Ada Historical Society, which with the Cascade Historical Society, featured Doyle as a speaker at a joint veterans event last week.

"When the men left to serve in the war, these remarkable women stepped in to assist in the war effort and get the jobs done. Through their dedication and service, the WASPs got a foot in the door of a future that would slowly open to women in aviation."

Doyle said she was the first girl in the marching band at South High School in Grand Rapids, playing the French horn. The band director told her: "You can be in it, but you can't wear pants. You have to wear a skirt."

Her father, a German immigrant, worked for the Pere Marquette Railway. It was her mother, Emma Baessler, who took her to see the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh when he came to Grand Rapids in August 1927.

She recalled hearing Lindbergh speak in the outdoor amphitheater at John Ball Park. Doyle was just 6.

Mildred (Jane) Doyle, 96, a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots during World War II, holds ...more

Mildred (Jane) Doyle, 96, a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots during World War II, holds the Congressional Gold Medal she awarded in 2010 for her service in the war while wearing her dress uniform at her Grand Rapids, Mich. home on Nov. 7, 2017.

Andraya Croft, Special to the Free Press

"It was a big thing over there. The newspapers gave him a lot of publicity when he came, and my mother was just interested in what was going on. ... Then, Wrong Way Corrigan came, too," Doyle said, "and she took me to that."

Douglas Corrigan was given the "Wrong Way" moniker when he flew across the Atlantic rather than across the U.S. in what many dubbed an intentional mistake after his plans to fly over the ocean were denied.

"And then, when my brother was in high school, he had a music instructor who was a pilot. He took him up for a ride, and I heard him telling about it. But I had never been in a plane."

It wasn't until she enrolled in what was then Grand Rapids Junior College in 1939 that Doyle considered flying an airplane was something she could do.

"I was taking engineering drawing and I was the only girl in the class," Doyle said. " I was ordered to sit in the back in the corner and the instructor came in and was talking to the fellas about this Civilian Pilot Training Program.

"After the class, I went up and said, 'How about women? Can I get in?' And he said, 'Well, I’ll find out.' And then he told me that one woman could get in for every 10 men.

"Men had to be 5-foot-4, but women could be 5-foot-2½. So I stretched, and passed the physical and got into the program that summer."

Cadets from the Class 44-W-4, from top left, Dorothy Allen, Mildred (Jane) Baessler, and Odean ...more

Cadets from the Class 44-W-4, from top left, Dorothy Allen, Mildred (Jane) Baessler, and Odean Bishop, from bottom left, Ina Barley and Stella Jo Baker at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas.

Mildred Jane Doyle

She did 70 hours of ground school training, and went on to do 35 hours of flying at Kent County Airport at a time when much of the world was at war. She said most Americans understood why President Franklin D. Roosevelt started programs like the Civil Pilot Training Program to ready the nation for its likely entry into the war.

By the fall of 1940, Doyle was enrolled at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and flying with the Civil Air Patrol to keep her pilot's license.

"I flew with anybody that would take me," she said.

Then, Pearl Harbor was attacked. Doyle's brother, Fredrick Baessler, enlisted in the navy as an officer, serving on a destroyer in the Pacific. Her sister joined the American Red Cross.

And one day, a telegram arrived.

It was from Jacqueline Cochran, the founder of a flying program that was recruiting female pilots from around the country to join the war effort.

"I got a telegram asking, 'was I interested?' ... I responded that I was interested.
And then I got a notice that said ... I had to go pass a physical at Selfridge Field," Doyle said.

Mildred (Jane) Doyle, 96, a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots during World War II, met ...more

Mildred (Jane) Doyle, 96, a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots during World War II, met her husband Donald Doyle while working at Freeman Field in Seymour, Ind. Donald, a Lt. Col. also flew planes in World War II.

Andraya Croft, Special to the Free Press

"So I had to get a ride over to Selfridge and pass the physical. And then I waited and then I got a notice that I was accepted and could I start the first of November 1943."

She passed the tests and made her way to Texas for seven months of training at Avenger Field in the town of Sweetwater. Cochrane was insistent that her pilots would be trained to fly every aircraft in service.

Altogether, Doyle and the other WASPs flew 60,000,000 miles of operation flights from 1942-44 and piloted 78 types of aircraft, according to Kimberly Johnson, the director of special collections at Texas Woman's University.

"The WASP pilots flew every type of plane the men flew, in every type of assignment and mission except for combat," said Keith Gill, director of exhibits and museum programming at the Air Zoo in Portage.

"When the B26 Marauder bomber and the B29 Superfortress bombers were first test flown they were considered unsafe. It took WASP pilots to fly them in demonstration flights to prove that after modifications had taken place, and male pilots retrained, that the planes could be trusted and were indeed safe to fly. In fact the B26 went on to have the lowest loss rate of any USAAF bomber.

"But it took women pilots flying it to help convince others that it was safe to fly. WASPs also flew top secret transport for the atomic bomb project, towing targets for live-fire aerial gunners and for anti-aircraft gunners on the ground, and countless test flights for equipment."

They also worked as instructors, and ferried planes from factories to bases. The women took part in engineering and safety tests, along with demonstrations, administrative flights, tracking and searchlight missions and more.

Mildred (Jane) Doyle, 96, a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots during World War II, fixes ...more

Mildred (Jane) Doyle, 96, a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots during World War II, fixes her tie while putting on her dress uniform at her Grand Rapids, Mich. home on Nov. 7, 2017. The WASP dress uniform consists of a Santiago Blue jacket, slacks or skirt, a white shirt, black tie, beret, and black shoes.

Andraya Croft, Special to the Free Press

Because they weren't considered part of the military at the time — they were civilians, the WASPs had to buy their own uniforms, cover the costs of traveling to the training center, and to their assigned bases. They had to pay rent, and cover other expenses. And when a woman died on the job — as 38 of them did — her family got nothing.

"For those that were lost, whose lives were given during the war, the government didn’t pay to get them back home, for their families to lay them to rest. There was a lot of sacrifice, but they did so willingly," Johnson said.

"What they did was open so many doors."

When Nancy Parrish learned about the work her mother, Odean Bishop Parrish, and fellow WASPs did during the war, she started a website called wingsacrossamerica.org to honor them and chronicle WASP history. Over the years, she has interviewed hundreds of women who flew for the group.

"Jane is probably one of the most fearless of the WASPs still alive," said Nancy Parrish, whose mother was better known as Deanie, and was one of the women who roomed with Doyle during training in Texas in 1943 and 1944. "Jane will climb in anything that flies. I love that. It makes you go back in time and think, she must have been very spunky as a child.

"I’m not sure if any of them thought what they were doing was courageous," said Parrish, who lives in Waco, Texas. "They just wanted to do something to help their country. And every WASP I interviewed loved to fly, and to have something you love in service to your country was a win-win. The timing was perfect because we needed them."

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"At a time when the war was not going in our favor, the work they did to free up the men to go fly in combat, it really changed the tide of the war," Johnson said. "The German party said if women were flying in that time for Germany, the war might have ended differently.

"These women, they were taken seriously. They could do the job. And while the program did get disbanded, it wasn’t because they weren’t able or capable. It was because we were winning the war, we weren’t as needed overseas. The men were coming back, and they wanted those jobs.

"At the time, it was OK to have women flying if the men were flying in combat overseas. But it wasn’t OK if the men were back."

Doyle said she was treated very well at Freeman Field by the men at the base, but, she said, "there was some resentment against us women being pilots. I don't know. ... When we got the notice that we were being disbanded, I felt bad about it, but all of us just accepted it and our job was done and we went home.

"Some were teachers, and they went back to teaching. A few of them were still flying and started their own air schools and went back as instructors. There were girls from all walks of life."

When the WASP program was disbanded in December 1944, all military documentation of the women's service was sealed and classified.

"Since they were not considered military veterans, they received no recognition, no benefits and little thanks," Gill said. "They even had to pay their own way back home. Sadly, their story was not known as the records of their program were considered classified or secret and historians knew little about their service to their country."

Finding work in aviation after the war proved difficult for many of them, too. A fellow WASP, Suzanne Parrish, who went on to become a co-founder of the Air Zoo museum, applied for commercial pilot jobs after the war, but was repeatedly denied.

"We have letters written to her rejecting her applications because she was a woman," Gill said. "Quite literally telling her, had she been born a man, things might be different. This was a common experience for former WASP pilots after the war.

"We have to look at these women today with admiration for the work that they did, the sacrifices they went through, and the expertise, professionalism, determination, talent and abilities that they brought to the service of their country. They were true trailblazers and we should honor them for their service just as any male who served in the military."

Doyle was a newlywed at the end of the war.

She met her husband, Donald Doyle, a flight instructor and check pilot, at Freemont Field in Indiana in June 1944.

"He had to check me out along with the engine," she said, chuckling.

Two months after they met, Jane Baessler became Jane Doyle.

"They said it wouldn't last a year," Doyle said. Instead, it lasted 67 years, and gave them five children, a dozen grandchildren and 19 great grandchildren.

Jane didn't do much flying after the WASP program was disbanded.

"I rented a small plane and flew around to keep my hours up ... but I didn't have any real purpose," she said. "And then we had a family and we settled down, and so I gave it up."

Though she had a degree in design from the U-M College of Architecture, she worked at a school for visually impaired children for a few years, then took a series of jobs for Aquinas College.

She didn't talk about her days flying as a WASP in service to her country.

"I never spoke about it for many years," Doyle said.

It wasn't until the 1970s, when the first women were admitted to the Air Force pilot training program and were incorrectly heralded as the first women to fly military planes, that the public began to learn about the WASP program. Many of Doyle's fellow WASPs spoke up to set the record straight.

In 1977, President Jimmy Carter recognized their work and granted the 1,074 women who served military veteran status.

Doyle uses a walker now; she has neuropathy in her feet, but the fiery spirit that took her to the skies at a time when women simply didn't do such things emerges as she talks about the years she served at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas, and at Freeman Field in Seymour, Ind.

"The first time I got up, I felt like an angel looking down on the Earth," she said. "It was so interesting, the patterns of everything, and you’d see things from above that you never even noticed on the ground, and yet things that were important on the ground were insignificant when you were flying.

"And so, I just loved it."

As time has passed, Doyle has found her voice. She spoke last week at a joint Cascade and Ada Historical Society veterans event. She also gave a presentation at her apartment building about the WASP program.

"My daughter, she goes with me to a lot of the lectures, and she keeps saying I find out more about you all of the time, things we didn't know," Doyle said.

She made a poster board loaded with pictures from her time as a WASP, and plans to display it on Veterans Day on Saturday next to displays from other veterans of the war in a public display in her building.

Finally, side by side with other veterans, recognized, acknowledged for doing what she did to help the war effort.

"You say the word WASP, you think of an insect, and it's an insect you really don't want around and you get rid of," Doyle said. "That's sort of the way it was with the WASPs, you know? They wanted to get rid of us.

"But I saw this article in Smithsonian magazine in April, and it was all about this banyan tree in India, and how it's the largest tree in the world. And it was started because of a fig wasp. The bug colonized the figs and the branches grew out and it's become the largest tree on the planet ... and it's kind of like that.

"It's something that started as just one organization. ... And now, the women that are pilots they keep praising us for opening up the field for them. They call us pioneers, ... the women in different fields of aviation, even the astronauts and the gals in the military, they all say, 'If it wasn't for you, we wouldn't be doing this today.' "